Virtualization news from VMware and the community of virtualization users, including the VMware Communities and VMTN, the VMware Technology Network.

Category Archives: vExpert

Thank you to everyone who applied for vExpert vSAN. The vExpert team and the VMware Storage Business Unit are pleased to announce the list of 2018 vExperts who received the vSAN award. This elite group includes bloggers, book authors, VMUG leaders, speakers, tool builders, community leaders and general enthusiasts. This group of individuals have passion and enthusiasm for technology, but more importantly, have demonstrated significant activity and evangelism around vSAN.

Please join us in congratulating them and welcoming them to the vExpert vSAN program. We couldn’t be more excited to partner and work with both the Storage BU and the vExpert program!

First we would like to say thank you to everyone who applied for the 2018 vExpert program. I’m pleased to announce the list of 2018 vExperts. Each of these vExperts have demonstrated significant contributions to the community and a willingness to share their expertise with others. Contributing is not always blogging or Twitter as there are many public speakers, book authors, CloudCred task writers, script writers, VMUG leaders, VMTN community moderators and internal champions among this group.

I want to personally thank everyone who applied and point out that a “vExpert” is not a technical certification or even a general measure of VMware expertise. The judges selected people who were particularly engaged with their community and who had developed a substantial personal platform of influence in those communities. If you feel like you were not selected in error, that’s entirely possible.

The judges may have overlooked or misinterpreted what you wrote in your application. Email us at vexpert@vmware.com and we can discuss your situation as well as provide feedback and guidance on what you can do to receive the award. We looked at all of the 2017 activities to determine the voting results. We will open the second half 2018 applications around May / June which will only allow for two voting periods this year.

If you were selected as a vExpert 2018, we will be conducting the on-boarding throughout the next few weeks so hold tight and expect future communication from us soon. Congratulations to all the vExperts, new and returning and we’re looking forward to working with you.

Head to the official vExpert Directory on the new vExpert App and Command + F away and find your name if you can’t wait for the welcome email. The 2018 vExpert email with access to the vExpert private community will go out shortly.

Applications for the 2018 vExpert program are now open. Applications will be accepted until January 19th at midnight PDT. The vExpert 2018 announcement will be on February 23rd 2018.

The VMware vExpert program is VMware’s global evangelism and advocacy program. The program is designed to put VMware’s marketing resources towards your advocacy efforts. Promotion of your articles, exposure at our global events, co-op advertising, traffic analysis, and early access to beta programs and VMware’s roadmap.

Each year, we bring together in the vExpert Program the people who have made some of the most important contributions to the VMware community. These are the bloggers, book authors, VMUG leaders, speakers, tool builders, community leaders and general enthusiasts. They work as IT admins and architects for VMware customers, they act as trusted advisors and implementors for VMware partners or as independent consultants, and some work for VMware itself. All of them have the passion and enthusiasm for technology and applying technology to solve problems. They have contributed to the success of us all by sharing their knowledge and expertise over their days, nights, and weekends.

vExperts who participate in the program have access to private betas, free licenses, early access briefings, exclusive events, free access to VMworld conference materials online, exclusive vExpert parties at VMworld and other opportunities to interact with VMware product teams. They also get access to a private community and networking opportunities.

New for vExpert 2018

New this year is a completely new vExpert website for applications, data management, vExpert directory. vExperts will be able to manage your own data (email address, employer, and many others), update your applications, download your license keys and download your vExpert Certificate. Apply at https://vexpert.vmware.com

Returning vExperts, you have a different process. Please check your email for a password recovery link to reset your password for vexpert.vmware.com. If you do not have an email to reset your vexpert.vmware.com account, please use this URL to reset your password. https://vexpert.vmware.com/recover-password. Use the same email address you use to receive email for the vExpert program.

Evangelist Path
The Evangelist Path includes book authors, bloggers, tool builders, public speakers, VMTN contributors, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others with the leverage of a personal public platform to reach many people. Employees of VMware can also apply via the Evangelist path. A VMware employee reference is recommended if your activities weren’t all in public or were in a language other than English.

Customer Path
The Customer Path is for leaders from VMware customer organizations. They have been internal champions in their organizations or worked with VMware to build success stories, act as customer references, given public interviews, spoken at conferences, or were VMUG leaders. A VMware employee reference is recommended if your activities weren’t all in public.

VPN (VMware Partner Network) Path
The VPN Path is for employees of our partner companies who lead with passion and by example, who are committed to continuous learning through accreditations and certifications and to making their technical knowledge and expertise available to many. This can take shape of event participation, video, IP generation, as well as public speaking engagements. A VMware employee reference is required for VPN Path candidates.

Questions & Updates For questions about the application process or the vExpert Program, please send email to vexpert@vmware.com. Be sure to follow @vExpert for updates on the 2018 vExpert program.

VCD is one of the products which I worked extensively with, and that’s where I started liking network virtualization. Considering the complexity of troubleshooting in VCD, I used VCD labs and I started looking at vCloud Director communities to better understand customer queries and then contributing to them as much as I could.

Over a period of time, I realized VMTN is by far one of the best technical hubs for VMware technologies and every day I spend 1-2 hours and follow the NSX & VCD communities.

Why are you passionate about NSX?

VMware NSX is at the forefront of the software-defined networking revolution. I come from a storage background and I switched my job to the virtualization field. I knew this was the right track to focus on and the last 8 years have been truly remarkable for me. I worked with the vCloud Network Security solution during its early days and I liked the concept of network virtualization.

My immediate focus was to clear VCAP-CIA and I achieved it very shortly followed by VCAP-DCA & DCD. I’m a strong believer of learning a technology in a way that makes people understand it very easily. If one cannot explain a feature/design, that shows a lack of knowledge in that area.

After spending a lot of hours in labs and reading blogs/books, I started training candidates on VCD, VCNS & NSX. For me this is where my passion for software-defined networking started. A few months back, I cleared VCAP6-NV and achieved VCIX track.

Having seen the technology transform all the way from VCNS to NSX for all types of workload all I want to say is NSX is a cherry on top of VMware product portfolio. It’s because of the large ecosystem, coupled with the fact that customers can leverage NSX in Private/Public and build a true network hybrid platform. We don’t need to chase a use case for implementing NSX. This product fits in extremely well for all types of workloads & environments and that is why I’m passionate about this technology.

Are you working on any projects you think the VMTN community would be interested in?

Having learned a few things about NSX, I decided I should give something back to the community. My first contribution was the NSX book – VMware NSX Network Essentials. The focus is on core components of NSX, how to deploy, and manage it effectively.

Thank you for the time, wise words, and great community contributions.

Do you see someone frequently answering questions in your favorite forums? Did someone provide server saving support to you recently at a VMUG or over Twitter? Any community involvement counts. Head to the Community Warrior page to nominate a user, or email katieb@vmware.com.

Thank you to the vExpert community for coming out to join us for our annual vExpert Party at VMworld U.S.

Each year we host the vExperts at a private event to provide a night of fun and entertainment. For this party we had food trucks, dessert truck, drinks, quarters, food & fire entertainment as well as great conversations and networking.

We held the event at the famous Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame featured on the History Channel. Each year we select a location for the event and this year we were approached by Carolynn Santos from VMware with the idea for Pinball and we instantly said YES, book it!

The Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame donates .90 on the dollar to local charities to help fight MS, Lupus and many other diseases. We were very proud this year knowing that all of the dollars we spent last night went to charity.

Some photos of the vExpert Party at VMworld U.S. in Las Vegas.

Nine Year vExperts!

The vExpert program has been around for 9 years and approaching our 10 year anniversary. I wanted to honor some of the 9 year vExperts and say THANK YOU! Thank you for your dedication to community and helping others. There are a couple that aren’t represented here that we will honor at the 10 year. Edward @texiwill, thank you for pulling everyone together for the photo.

Now this is dedication, Christopher Kusek @cxi, he will do anything to get the right shot!

vExpert Swag Bags

Thank you Gina Minks @gminks and the vSphere team for putting these together and all of your hard work. The vExpert swag bags were excellent and were a huge hit at the show. vExperts, please be sure to thank @gminks for the vExpert Swag Bags.

Swag Bag included:

Battery pack

Phone cable

Stickers

Water bottle

Branded vExpert bag

NSX Community Leader Summit

Thank you to the vExpert NSX Community as well as the NSBU at VMware for putting together this amazing event for NSX Community leaders. Chris McCain @hcmccain kicked things off in the evening and leads our VMware NSX Ninja Program.

To recognize VMTN Community contributors, there are going to be 8 fantastic programs running at VMworld – including some for those who cannot attend the event. Get excited and get signed up for the following:

Blogger tables will be set-up to provide a space for bloggers to write, charge, and network.

VMware Blogger Program Manager, Elsa Mayer, will be manning this area in the US and Europe to introduce her plans for the program and hand-out SWAG do nothing else… Don’t miss the opportunity to stop by.

Each year, vExpert Advocacy Manager, Corey Romero, hosts all of the vExperts for an after-hours event at a fantastic location near VMworld. Inside-scoop: this years US party will be held at the Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame.

If you are a vExpert, watch your email for invitations to both the US and Europe parties.

And that’s a wrap! I will see you folks either virtually, or in person at the VMTN Community Area in VMvillage in just over a month.

For further information or questions around these programs, email the VMTN Community Manager, katieb@vmware.com.

Thank you to everyone who applied for vExpert. I’m pleased to announce the list of 2017 Second Half vExperts. Each of these vExperts have demonstrated significant contributions to the community and a willingness to share their expertise with others. Contributing is not always blogging or Twitter as there are many public speakers, book authors, script writers, VMUG leaders, VMTN community moderators and internal champions among this group.

I want to personally thank everyone who applied and point out that a “vExpert” is not a technical certification or even a general measure of VMware expertise. The judges selected people who were particularly engaged with their community and who had developed a substantial personal platform of influence in those communities. If you feel like you were not selected in error, that’s entirely possible.

The judges may have overlooked or misinterpreted what you wrote in your application. Email us at vexpert@vmware.com and we can discuss your situation. We looked at all of the 2015 and some of 2016 activities to determine the voting results.

If you were selected as a vExpert 2017 Second Half, we will be conducting on-boarding this week. You should now have the welcome email in your inbox which will explain the entire program and what you need to do to be enrolled in our private vExpert community as well as listed in the vExpert directory. We will use the email address provided in your vExpert application. We will extend the vExpert Reception invite to you for both VMworld US in Las Vegas as well as VMworld Europe in Barcelona. Congratulations to all the vExperts, new and returning.

We’re looking forward to working with you. Command + F away and find your name if you can’t wait for the welcome email.

Corey Romero, and the VMware Social Media & Community Team

Note: The list below are the newly added vExperts only. This is not the complete vExpert list.

Each year VMware provides blogger passes to both the VMworld US and the VMworld Europe conferences. The program is simple: if you are a technical blogger or have a publication around Virtualization then you should apply for a complementary blogger pass to one of the conferences. We provide the pass, you provide the transportation and hotel accommodations. The blogger passes are full conference passes so you will still be able to register for sessions just the same as a regular conference pass difference is these are free of charge.

Since passes are limited, we will only provide one pass per person per year. Meaning you can go to either VMworld US in Las Vegas or VMworld Europe in Barcelona. Keep in mind that in the past we have always had more passes to Las Vegas then Barcelona and both are limited. U.S. Limit is 50 blogger passes while the Europe conference is limited to 35 blogger passes.

Key Dates:

April 12th – Blogger Pass Applications Open

May 12th – Blogger Pass Applications Close

June 2nd – Blogger Pass Allocation & Announcement

June 12th – Early Bird Registration Closes

Not everyone will be chosen for a blogger pass since the passes are limited and I’m sure we will see a tremendous response this year. If plans change please email cromero at vmware.com with the cancelation so we can allocate the blogger pass to the next qualified blogger.

Congratulations William! @Lamw is well-known for his blog, virtuallyGhetto, but has also been actively contributing to VMTN for almost 10 years. He has earned nearly 25,000 points in this time and attained the Guru badge, consistently supporting others in their endeavors to achieve automation. He has been instrumental in helping the VMware {code} developer program take-off, presents at VMUGs all over the world, and has been a vExpert since the start of the program.

In exploring his online presence, and reading the wonderful nominations I received for him from @LucD, @arielsanchezmor, and @Nscuola, who described William’s following as “cult-like,” I decided I needed to find out more about the man behind the scripts first-hand.

I had the chance to ask him a few questions…

K: William, you are a very decorated community member, you were just named one of the Top 50 Overall VMware Influencers this year, and you’ve been a vExpert for all 8 years – why and how did you start as a VMware evangelist?

W: The evangelism was really a by-product of the work I had been doing over the years rather than a specific goal I had in mind. Like many in the VMware Community, my career started out as a regular Systems Administrator and at the time, I was supporting a mix of Linux/UNIX and VMware-based infrastructures. Having worked for several large Enterprises, I was exposed to a multitude of challenges which gave me a great opportunity to learn about news things and solve some really hard problems.
I am a huge believer in sharing what you have learned so that others can build on top of that knowledge and do even greater things. This constant learning and sharing of VMware knowledge has always been something I enjoyed and as I mentioned earlier, the evangelism for VMware and their solutions just sort of happened naturally.

K: Very cool! I’m sure a lot of our readers can relate. How did you get to where you are today – with almost 17,000 followers on Twitter and one of the most popular blogs in the community?

W: To be perfectly honest, I still ask myself that every day. I think for me personally; I have always enjoyed learning about new things and sharing that back with the community whether that is explaining a complex topic or building creative solutions to solve real customer problems. I think being passionate about what you do really helps, regardless if you are the #1 blogger or 2,013th blogger. Find that one thing you really love and just keep at it, you may not see it right away, but it will pay dividends in the future in ways you cannot even imagine.

K: That’s great advice. What has your passion led you to lately… What are you currently working on?

W: I had just recently finished a fun little project with my good friend Alan Renouf called USB to SDDC which we also got to present for the first time in public at both the Sydney and Melbourne VMUG a couple of weeks ago. The idea is quite simple, how cool would it be if you could simply plug in a USB key into a server and have automatically provision and configure ESXi, the vCenter Server Appliance and vSAN without any additional user interaction? That is what Project USB to SDDC is all about. You can find more details in this blog post here: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2017/04/project-usb-to-sddc-part-1.html

Then be sure to submit your nominations for Community Warrior #5. Who has stood out in your favorite community lately? What warrior has been knocking down questions left and right? Contact the Community Manager @KTbradley on VMTN or through email at katieb@vmware.com to nominate.

First we would like to say thank you to everyone who applied for the 2017 vExpert program. I’m pleased to announce the list 2017 vExperts. Each of these vExperts have demonstrated significant contributions to the community and a willingness to share their expertise with others. Contributing is not always blogging or Twitter as there are many public speakers, book authors, CloudCred task writing, script writers, VMUG leaders, VMTN community moderators and internal champions among this group.

I want to personally thank everyone who applied and point out that a “vExpert” is not a technical certification or even a general measure of VMware expertise. The judges selected people who were particularly engaged with their community and who had developed a substantial personal platform of influence in those communities. If you feel like you were not selected in error, that’s entirely possible.

The judges may have overlooked or misinterpreted what you wrote in your application. Email us at vexpert at vmware.com and we can discuss your situation as well as provide feedback and guidance on what you can do to receive the award. We looked at all of the 2016 activities to determine the voting results. We will open the second half 2017 applications around May / June which will only allow for two voting periods this year.

If you were selected as a vExpert 2017, we will be conducting the on-boarding throughout the next few weeks so hold tight and expect future communication from us soon. To be listed in the vExpert Directory, you must have a VMTN Community account. We will provide instructions on how to create your own directory listing as well as how to gain access to the private forum in the next communication. We will send the welcome email to the email address provided in your vExpert application. Congratulations to all the vExperts, new and returning and we’re looking forward to working with you.

Command + F away and find your name if you can’t wait for the welcome email. The 2017 vExpert welcome email will go out soon along with access to the vExpert private community.